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" This book uses a decade of primary research to examine how weather and climate, as measured by variations in the growing season using satellite remote sensing, has affected agricultural production food prices and access to food in food-insecure regions of the world"--

The agriculture system is under pressure to increase production every year as global population expands and more people move from a diet mostly made up of grains, to one with more meat, dairy and processed foods. This book uses a decade of primary research to examine how weather and climate, as measured by variations in the growing season using satellite remote sensing, has affected agricultural production, food prices and access to food in food-insecure regions of the world. The author reviews environmental, economics and multidisciplinary research to describe the connection betwee.

As the cost of satellite missions grow, government agencies are working to increase the relevance and usefulness of the Earth science data that they produce. The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) early adopter program seeks to formalize partnerships with users of data early within the satellite planning process to ensure the greatest value of the mission. Scientists who are designing the satellite observing system, those who are developing mission data products, and the community who will use them need to work together to determine how satellite data can better inform decision making. NASA is working to initiate engagement with data users much earlier in the satellite program life so that the user needs can be prioritized, continue to engage with users throughout the development cycle, and then include analysis on societal impact after nominal mission life. The Early Adopter Program allows for broad and early engagement with decision makers by encouraging individuals and institutions with clear uses of data to engage with the mission. Early adopters facilitate feedback on mission products during pre-launch and accelerate the utilization of these products post-launch. This paper provides background and detail on how NASA is working to engage with early adopters, describes the partnership between early adopters and NASA missions, and connects the program to improved societal impacts of its satellite missions.

AbstractChanging precipitation patterns caused by climate change are expected to have major impacts on food security and nutrition in agrarian areas in developing countries. However, the linkages between the duration and severity of precipitation shocks and their effects on child nutrition and household food security metrics remain underexplored. In this study, we used Feed the Future datasets from Ghana and Bangladesh to examine the impact of precipitation extremes on nutrition, measured by children's height-for-age and weight-for-height Z-scores, and food security, measured by the Household Hunger Scale. We used a spatial error regression to control for the effects of spatial autocorrelation, and we found an association between precipitation shocks and household hunger in both Ghana and Bangladesh, as well as an association between higher rainfall and worse child nutrition in Ghana.

As climate change continues, it is expected to have increasingly adverse impacts on child nutrition outcomes, and these impacts will be moderated by a variety of governmental, economic, infrastructural, and environmental factors. To date, attempts to map the vulnerability of food systems to climate change and drought have focused on mapping these factors but have not incorporated observations of historic climate shocks and nutrition outcomes. We significantly improve on these approaches by using over 580,000 observations of children from 53 countries to examine how precipitation extremes since 1990 have affected nutrition outcomes. We show that precipitation extremes and drought in particular are associated with worse child nutrition. We further show that the effects of drought on child undernutrition are mitigated or amplified by a variety of factors that affect both the adaptive capacity and sensitivity of local food systems with respect to shocks. Finally, we estimate a model drawing on historical observations of drought, geographic conditions, and nutrition outcomes to make a global map of where child stunting would be expected to increase under drought based on current conditions. As climate change makes drought more commonplace and more severe, these results will aid policymakers by highlighting which areas are most vulnerable as well as which factors contribute the most to creating resilient food systems.